absence and he was obliged to re-kindle it laboriously on his return, if indeed he did not content himself with the minute cooking-stove already mentioned, which made but poor cheer on a chilly evening. He was, moreover, astonished to observe that his lamp had been trimmed and lighted, that the table had been spread for his evening. meal, and that a female figure was seated by his hearth.

'Mrs. Adlem!' he gasped, pausing on the threshold, and being amazed that the neighbour whose ministrations were strictly confined to the morning should have visited him at this hour of the day.

'It bain't Mrs. Adlem,' responded Susan's voice, 'tis me, Mr. Candy. I couldn't help comin'-along o' the valentine, ye know.'

Candy shut the door behind him, scraped his feet carefully on the mat, and advanced into the room with a puzzled expression. Had Susan come to make inquiries respecting the sender of that valentine, or was it possible that she had already found out?

She rose as he approached and came towards him, such a transformed, transfigured Susan, with a face that looked fifteen years younger, and that was actually almost beautiful in its glow of happiness. She had donned her Sunday gown too, and wore a bow of blue ribbon at her throat.

'I come a bit too early,' she explained hastily, and I thought I mid jist so well tidy up a bit here, an' get your tea ready for 'ee -an' there's your slippers put by the fire; I d' 'low they're nice an' warm by now and I've made the tea-so all's ready. But take off your boots first.'

Candy, retracing his steps, hung up his cap on the peg by the door, and then proceeding to the hearth, began to divest himself slowly of his muddy footgear.

Susan stood watching him till his head was bent down over his task, and then resumed in a somewhat tremulous voice :

“ The very minute I opened that letter, Mr. Candy, I knowed 'twas from you-an' when I pulled the strings an' saw what was wrote inside-dear, I can't tell ye what I felt! I didn't tell none of 'em nothin' about it, but I slipped out so soon as I could-there, I didn't care if they was all to grumble at me this day, and I asked at Burton's-I couldn't do wi'out bein' quite sure, ye know, along of it's bein' sich a particular thing-an' when I found out as it was really you an' nobody else what bought the valentine-there, I can't tell 'ee how glad I was! My heart did seem to keep a singin'

to itself the whole way along the road. I come straight here o’ course, along o' the valentine sayin' I must manage the rest myself. Then, when I seed you wasn't here I thought I'd best wait till you comed home. The time didn't seem so very long for I kept thinkin' all the while "This is what I'll be doin' when me an' Candy's man and wife!",

During Susan's excited and blissful outpouring, Candy had been unlacing his boots in a conscientious and painstaking manner. At the more salient points of her discourse, his finger might have been seen to pause in the very act of curving itself round the greasy leather strip, but he did not raise his head till the conclusion of her speech; then he looked up with a very red face.

'Did ye chance to bring that valentine along with ye?' he asked.

'I did indeed,' rejoined Susan gleefully; and she produced it from her capacious pocket. 'There, 'tis the prettiest thing I ever did see; I don't know how you did come to light on it. It mid ha' jist been made a purpose for we. And to think I never guessed at what was in your mind before-but the minute I pulled the strings-the blessed little strings

She broke off faltering, and Candy, taking the envelope from her hand, silently proceeded to examine the enclosure. There were the roses, there were the encircling ribbons and the pendant strings. Taking first one and then the other of these between his large finger and thumb he pulled them cautiously. Lo and behold, the posy slid downwards disclosing in the centre of the valentine a large crimson heart, on either side of which appeared verses in ink of the same hue.

Mechanically kicking off his boots and thrusting his feet into the slippers, he went nearer to the light, and read as follows :

This cluster of roses

My secret discloses,

A heart both tender and true.

Though it be not leap year

The hint's pretty clear,

And the rest must be managed by you.

Luckily poor Susan had bashfully averted her face and did not see the stupefaction imprinted on that of Postman Candy.

The valentine which he had chosen so carefully, not only for its pretty appearance but for its guiltlessness of all semblance of foolishness,' had conveyed a declaration which the poor innocent

soul was taking in all seriousness! What on earth was he to do now?

Susan repeated the last line with a nervous titter, becoming earnest, however, as she added: "Twouldn't ha' been so easy to manage the rest wi' anybody else, but wi' you, Mr. Candy, a true friend as you did say yourself this marnin'-well, there, I d' 'low we do understand each other.'

Candy made an inarticulate murmur, scratching his head the while.

'My only friend, as I mid say,' went on Susan with emotion.

The postman cleared his throat, and turned round, conscious as he did so of the comfortable warmth of his slippers-a sensation due to Susan's thoughtfulness. Seeing that she had extended her hand he hastily did the same, clasping hers firmly and pumping it vigorously up and down, without speaking. A warm, plump little hand, but roughened by ceaseless work; even as he grasped it the thought flashed across his mind that he had never, during all the years he had known her, found Susan Boyt idle. His eyes wandered round the room, noting that the floor had been swept, the hearthstone whitened, and-why, actually she had found time to polish the pots and pans which had long hung rusty on the wall; even the old warming-pan gleamed with newly recovered brightness.

''E―es, I did manage to get through a good bit of work while I was a-waitin,' said Susan, observing him. 'I'd work my fingers to the bwone for 'ee,' she added, with fervour.

Postman Candy's gaze reverted to her face with an expression that softened more and more, and noted a certain wistfulness in the midst of its happiness.

'I know I bain't your equals in cleverness,' said Susan humbly; 'I were never clever, an' I do 'low that's why father did leave me a burden, so to speak, on my sister Rose.'

'Not much of a burden, I think,' said Candy, indignantly. 'Why, 'tis you as keeps the whole place goin'!'

He patted the toilworn hand encouragingly, and then drew it firmly through his arm.

'They'll have to do without you now up at Inkpen's,' he said; then suddenly fell to laughing. Whatever'll them two maids say when you do tell 'em?' he cried, triumphantly. Be sure you make 'em pull the strings,' he added.

'Why, o' course, that's the first thing anybody 'ud do,' replied Susan.

'To be sure,' agreed he, dubiously, however, the very first thing.'

He put his arm round her solid waist and imprinted a warm salute on her round cheek.

'Never go for to tell I as you bain't clever, my dear,' he cried, at which Susan felt more elated than she had ever been in her life.

And so Susan, who had never had anything of her own, found herself suddenly in possession of two trifling adjuncts to a woman's happiness-a husband and a home. Being an old-fashioned sort of body she was content with these-indeed, the only drawback to her bliss was the fact that for some inscrutable reason the Inkpen family never forgave her.

REFLECTIONS ON THE POE CENTENARY.

ONE would naturally have thought that in the matter of literary centenaries old England might have successfully defied transatlantic competition. But no! Here, too, as Thackeray says, when the young Lady Castlewood stands up to Aunt Bernstein in The Virginians,' the colonies have revolted and defeated the mother country. No recent celebration has had so much life and conviction about it as the celebration of Edgar Allan Poe that is now committing itself to the tender care of the literary historians of the future. In the first place, the Poe celebration has been carefully prepared. For several years past books and commentaries and editions of Poe have been snowing up the bookshops of two continents. The celebration, therefore, has coincided with a distinct epoch in the critical commemoration of its subject. In the second place, the commemoration has not been confined to one place or one capital. It has been cosmopolitan, international. The University of Virginia has missed no opportunity of giving a touch of academic distinction to the occasion (Oxford has set the example of reserving the unique honour of a special mausoleum for a pupil whom it had expressly expelled). But New York, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia have all taken a prominent part, and have entirely repudiated the idea of a local celebration of Poe. With an agreeable assumption of humility, New England has deferred to the voice of Europe. It has admitted that there must have been a good deal more in Edgar than it had formerly deemed possible. England and France have both had the joyeuse entrée which the opportunity of saying' We always thought so' not infrequently affords, and they have certainly not failed to take advantage of it. The 'Times,' the Nineteenth Century,' Mr. Bernard Shaw, and other leading organs of public opinion have proclaimed with one voice the irrevocable and irresistible pre-eminence of Poe. Paris, which witnessed the dawn, and exulted in the noonday of the cult of Poe, has prepared poems, paragraphs, marginalia, studies and even elaborate monographs against the occasion. In the last number of the Mercure de France' we read a version of Mr. Ingram's interesting illustrated sketch of Poe's Life' in The Bookman,' in the current number VOL. XXVI.-NO. 153, N.S. 22